In my opinion, there’s a really easy way that Citywest could improve their customer satisfaction with very little cost: better communication.
It’s strange that a communications company doesn’t value communicating directly with its customers. The one advantage a small town and small company should have over the big city/big company is the personal touch.
So whenever there’s a network issue, whenever there’s a slowdown, I faithfully go to the Citywest webpage and check my Citywest e-mail. Not a peep. You’d think that if there’s something that’s affecting all their customers, they’d have something to say about it.
How about an unofficial blog, that we could subscribe to with an RSS reader or with an e-mail subscription? When Telus or whomever drops the ball and screws our internet access, why not a short two or three sentence post to tell us?
Right now, the only explanation we have when there are network problems are from personal contacts with Citywest employees, or the rumour mill.
HTMF shouldn’t be the place where Citywest customers get their news about Citywest issues.
This would be really easy to set up, and like I said, it could have an RSS Feed (and with Feedburner involved, it could become an e-mail subscription too). Whenever there’s an issue, tell us about it. Then we’d be less likely to complain about crappy Citywest service. In fact, I’d bet we’d be saying “Citywest gives us great personal service, unlike Telus and Rogers in the big cities.”
Come on Citywest, you guys are smart. Make a blog! Explain things to your customers and we’ll be happier!
Further to that, here’s what’s on Citywest’s webpage right now (see screenshot).
So they do have the ability to post stuff on their website, but apparently Terrace Cable Customers are more important than Rupert internet customers.
I’ve never seen anything posted on there that says “sorry that internet access is crappy right now in Rupert. We’re trying to get Telus to fix it. Please be patient.”
Maybe one thing CityWest needs to do is inform the people that have a constant upload problem (ie Limewire or something similar) that is running in the background of their computer and there is no need for it, how to fix that. It seems like the average user has no idea how to turn off the “no uploading” feature in whatever programs they use.
I understand that might not be part of CityWest’s jurisdiction, but it would make part of the problem go away quite easily, once people realized they were sharing information they didn’t know about.
I totally agree on the communication point… other ISP’s have trouble pages and send out emails to their customers letting them know what’s going on, why doesn’t ours? Wouldn’t that be a lot easier to send the message out once on a webpage, or once through an email, rather than dealing with hundreds of individual calls through the office??
I think it’s been at least 2 years since I recieved an email from CityWest/CityTel about any of their services my household pays over $230 a month for.
Perhaps they already have contracted the service out, it’s called hacking the main frame!
Somehow you folks seem to have a better handle on the internet thing than the folks that are supposed to be delivering the internet thing…
Yes it is. The only thing that we don’t end up paying for is long distance, as that is thrown in there for free with the cell, cable, and internet bundle.
$230 for 2 land lines, internet, 1 cell phone, and cable tv.
We’re pretty much in the same boat… full cable package ($62ish/mo), intertron ($40/mo), landline + a little bit of long distance here and there ($30/mo), cell phone ($50/mo or so, I think).
I actually don’t even pay that much attention to it. I just pay it.
This is interesting and odd. I had some connectivity problems and was off-line this afternoon, everything checked out on my end. So I thought it might be an issue with my account. So I decided to give CityWest a call. Awhile ago you could talk to someone in the evenings on the weekend here in PR. Now, they give you a 1 800 number to call and you get someone in Terrace. The friendly gentleman in Terrace faxed my issue to PR. My connectivity issue quickly resolved itself spontaneously. Maybe Keith checked my account…who knows
So much for the personal touch here in PR.
I also called cit tel and left a message and actually got a call back the probelm ws on there end ws done all afternoon off and on. so they said anyways
I might actually start hosting HTMF outside of Rupert. I’ve been checking some hosting options.
That would be sad, really, because when Rupert people are on HTMF, it’s essentially saving Citywest out-of-town bandwidth.
So far, though, Citywest has been great about letting me host the site on an ADSL line. That’s something you would never get from Rogers or Telus. Try hosting a site on one of their residential lines. Not going to happen.
from my friend in Citywest it is the bandwidth problem they haven’t lite up the fibre for us yet because Telus wants to charge an arm and a leg to go through them in Terrace, guess they are pissed we built the fibre and not them, apparently the Queen Charlottes internet is fast for Telus uses a different hook up for it in terrace even though it goes through our microwave tower, and also there are 2 companies currently using the fibre from here to terrace , one is a Cn company and it hooks up to its own fibre in Terrace and apparently Citywest is looking at them as well to buy bandwidth from and dump telus , but Citywest should email their customers at least to confirm some of these rumours so they don’t get the heat and we can all bitch to the CRTC about Telus holding us hostage, oh and Rogers is also interested in renting fibre from Citywest
I swear if they use that fibre and bandwidth for cable television (implied a while back) you can bet your weenie-warmer I’ll be the first on a rooftop, with a gun!
I hate this situation:(
I need to use the Internet to connect to my company data base, without a connection I’m SOL, I can’t get my work done.
I wonder what would happen if I went to CityWest here in PR and asked Greg about our connectivity problems? Would he tell me the truth?
